ABSTRACT

Currently our species, and others, are exposed to a convergence of three interrelated dangers. First is the still-increasing dynamic of ‘unsustainability,’ not just in its material biophysical forms, including anthropogenic-induced climate change, but also by the advancing of the intellectual, epistemological and instrumental defuturing character of the Anthropocene. Next are the geopolitical global tensions associated with links between a new era of nuclear weapons proliferation, asymmetrical warfare and unstable or dysfunctional states. And then third is the arrival of a hegemonic technosphere, and with it the arrival of fundamental questions about the very form of our species being’as exemplified by the growing debate on the posthuman. Against this backdrop, as will be argued, is the imperative to eliminate the disjuncture between the critical, criticality and criticism. This on the basis of recognizing that all creative practitioners are politically situated and, as such, either expose and then respond to the critical conditions of the contemporary human condition (via their practice and available or new modes of criticism) or contribute, knowingly or unknowingly, to its worsening. Explicitly choices have to be made, or by default are made. There is no position of neutrality.